Hand
by ariel2me
Summary: She kept her hands firmly by her side, nails clawing at her own flesh, to keep her fingers from clawing and tearing out Aegon's face as the triumphant pretender king crowed, "Your father said my envoy's chopped hands are the only hands Orys shall have of him. How wrong he turned out to be. Orys has your hand in marriage now." (Orys/Argella)


She kissed her father's gnarly, wrinkled hand before he left for his final battle, and tried not to think about those mangled limbs, the hands of Aegon's envoy returned to Dragonstone in a box carved with prancing stags.

Later they would claim that those hands in the box were what started it all, that Argilac had started it all when he ordered those hands chopped off, and that Aegon was merely reacting to the gross injustice, as well as the insult and dishonor to his name. Argella knew better, of course. Aegon had been looking for an excuse for years, a pretext to justify his conquest of the Seven Kingdoms, and her father with his stubborn pride and his reckless fury had so very conveniently and foolishly provided Aegon with one.

Orys offered both his hands to raise her up after he ordered the chains strangling her to be removed. A look passed between them, fleeting, almost momentary, but fraught with unspoken meaning. _We each have our part to play_, she assumed his gaze to be telling her. _I will play the part of the chivalrous lord, not at all vengeful that you and your father once thought me so beneath you, and you will play the part of the grateful lady, not at all vengeful that your father died by my hand._

Never mind that he was a bastard, not a lord, and she was a queen, not a mere lady. Stubborn pride and reckless fury had brought her father to his demise, and to the loss of everything the Durrandons had owned for thousands of years. She would keep her pride and her fury, but she would never be foolish enough or reckless enough to parade them, unguarded.

Orys asked for her hand to kiss, in the manner of a lord to his lady wife, and she consented as she gazed into his eyes, waiting for that look of triumphant crowing that bewilderingly never came. Not from him, at least.

She kept her hands firmly by her side, nails clawing at her own flesh, to keep her fingers from clawing and tearing out Aegon's face as that pretender king crowed, "Your father said that my envoy's chopped hands are the only hands Orys shall have of him. How wrong he turned out to be. Orys has your hand in marriage now, Argilac's precious daughter who was supposedly too good for a bastard. And he has everything else that used to be Argilac Durrandon's in his hands – land, castle, title, the loyalty of his people."

_You made him a mere storm lord. He will be never a king the way the Durrandons were kings. You think him your puppet, whose strings you are pulling, but I will pull harder, and then we will see -_

_You are not a queen, Argella, as you should have been. You are his whore, the bastard's whore. How could my daughter have brought herself down so low?_Her father's ghost accused her, even as Argella herself was silently accusing Aegon and Orys.

_Did you leave me any choice, Father? I would rather have married a bastard than watch you die, watch the line of the storm kings die._

"My husband is not a bastard, Your Grace. He is a most honorable lord, and your right hand man. You said so yourself," Argella said to the pretender king, her voice dripping sweet as honey, the flattery thick as treacle, disguising the poisonous bitterness coursing through her veins.

She took Orys' hand and grasped it, firmly, his sword hand, the one that slayed her father, when they walked into Storm's End for the first time as husband and wife, watched warily by the men in the garrison who had betrayed her, who had ripped her clothes and left her naked, who had put her in chains and left her under the merciless glare of the scorching sun and the mocking gaze of her own people for days.

When the time finally came, as she had always known it would come, treachery being a recurring habit for craven, self-serving cowards, her whispers would guide Orys' hand to deliver the severest punishment to those same men. And the same hand that once delivered the mortal blow to kill Argilac Durrandon would deliver the swing of the blade to take the heads of the men who had betrayed and humiliated Argilac's daughter, under the merciless glare of the scorching sun.

Or so Argella thought.

"It was not my sword hand that delivered the final blow to your father," Orys confided to her, that night.

"No?" Had it been the dragon after all? Had it been Rhaenys' Meraxes? A seed too fragile to be called '_hope_' started to grow in Argella, despite her best effort to stamp it out.

"I had lost my sword fending off your father's ferocious attack. I was picking it up from the ground with my other hand when he came charging. He was … too quick, despite his age. I didn't have time to switch the blade to my sword hand."

It was foolish to hope. It was reckless to hope. She had promised herself never to be as foolish and as reckless as her father had been, and therefore should have known better than to commit the crime of hoping for anything at all.

"Argella?"

Orys would ask her if she hated him for her father's death, and she would lie and say, "No." But that was not to be his question after all.

"He called out your name, in the end. That was your father's last word. _Argella_. Your name. I should have told you that from the start."

"Why didn't you?"

"Because I was a fool. I thought it would serve as a constant reminder that I was with him at the end, that I was the one who –"

"The truth, Orys. You owe me that much."

"That_is_ the truth. But not the whole truth. There is also this - he did not think me good enough for you. I was an abomination in his eyes, an insult to his daughter's honor."

"And you thought it was a suitable form of revenge to conceal his last word from his daughter? Killing him wasn't enough?"

"Is that what you believe all along? That I killed him because he insulted me? If you think me that craven, why did you consent to wed me?"

"Consent? Did I have a choice? A _real_ choice, Orys, not empty, meaningless words dressed up as choices."

"You have a choice now," he told her, holding out both his hands for her inspection. "This hand struck the first blow, the one that stunned your father and made him lose his balance. This one struck the last blow, the one that finished him off. Do what you will with them."

It was an empty gesture, an empty, meaningless gesture dressed up as one with significance, for how could she have done anything at all to the hands belonging to Aegon Targaryen's right hand man, even if she had wanted to?

Did she want to? Argella stared and stared at her husband's hands, the ones he was offering her like a poisonous gift.

"I am not my father," Argella recoiled, suddenly remembering the hands in the box, the ones that supposedly had started everything.


End file.
